Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 8, 2022
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125 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The way it was meant to be played.
@sam: Wow that was great, thanks for the link!
Obviously fake news.
@sam:..The way it was meant to be played.
I never had any. Maybe that’s why I love other peoples kids.
And, oh yeah, I was one once.
Pick a number, any number. Filled up the tank on my truck last night: 20.5 gallons regular unleaded
$85 and change
Yeah, that hurt. We picked a hell of a time to head down to NOLA and see my granddaughter. Oh well, such is life.
@Mister Bluster: Having children is OK. Having grandchildren… Sheeeeeit, that’s where the fun is.
@OzarkHillbilly: Welcome, and enjoy your stay!
Yesterday there was a back and forth between myself and a couple of others about whether there was a reluctance to truly listen to someone just because they were challenging one’s world view. Lest anyone think I was putting myself above all this and lecturing from my self-perceived moral high ground, let me share this.
At my company we have a number of open positions that either directly or indirectly report to me or affect my team enough that I’m involved in the interview process. Now, as many of you know, I’m not a fan of Trump and I question the judgement of his supporters and am contemptuous of outright trumpers. Despite this, I believe strongly that every person deserves to be judged on their own merits , which conflicts with my tendency to pre-judge anyoneTrump adjacent. Put more directly, I am prejudiced against them. So I have to work hard not to let that affect my evaluation. This isn’t just for moral reasons, but also practical ones, as I would be eliminating good canditates. I know this because, while I don’t talk about politics at work and that’s the norm in my company, I’m pretty sure I work with a number of people in the Trump-o-sphere and a few of them are some of the most pleasant people to work with – highly competent and just good people. It would be easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking, “well, they are just one of the good ones”. I could go on about how I try to overcome my prejudices but I won’t. (OK, I’ll share one rule – never Google anyone before an interview, or even after! LinkedIn only!) Suffice it to say, I don’t hold myself in a morally superior position on this. It’s something that, lately, I’ve had to deal with virtually every day.
@Jon: We always do. I like to look for things that are cheap and easy to do and this time I’m making it to the Lafeyette Cemetery #1 come hell or high water. I love visiting cemeteries.
@OzarkHillbilly: Or not: **PLEASE NOTE, DUE TO REPAIRS AND ROUTINE MAINTENANCE, THE CEMETERY IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED.**
Fck me.
ETA: But #2 is still open!!! Hooray!
@OzarkHillbilly:
Far more related to religion than ethnicity IMO.
Though it varies; ethnic discrimination probably more marked in say NW than SE Europe.
As I’ve said before, if you can distinguish between an average Syrian and an average south east European, you are an extremely acute observer.
But religion is certainly a factor.
And particularly in south-east Europe, where the wars of liberation against Ottoman Muslim rule only ended a century ago.
Which in European terms is recent.
But there’s an even bigger factor, at least in the UK, according to polls I’ve seen and also some people I have spoken too.
The victims of civil wars are viewed unfavourably; the sentiment often seems t be “it’s their fault they can’t get along with each other; why should we give them shelter?”
Poorly informed, short-sighted and callous, certainly; but it seems to be an even larger element than religion or ethnicity.
Which is why combating such attitudes requires a different information strategy to a purely religio/ethnic prejudice; and why Lamis Abdelaaty project may fail if that factor is ignored.
Ethnicity is undoubtedly the main issue when it comes to sub-Saharan African refugees, though.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Cities of the dead.
Rereading her thread, I don’t think that will be a problem for her. She doesn’t appear to be ignoring anything.
@OzarkHillbilly: Yah, both are good.
Also St. Louis No. 1 and No. 2 are pretty great. And while I generally don’t condone Metairie, the Metairie Cemetery is pretty cool too.
My 90 year-old mother-in-law died a few days ago – vascular dementia. We own the house she was in for the last two years, a house large enough to allow my sister-in-law to carry most of the weight of care. What do we do with the house, now? That’s item #1.
Item #2 is that we’re buying a house for our daughter and her live-in BF (who we love, great kid). But there’s a big gap in income between the two families and we are worried about issues of pride, but also ownership.
Item #3: Some company offered to buy out not our IP, but our cash flow from existing properties. For six million dollars. We said, “Nah.”
Item #4, taxes.
Item #5, remodel the kitchen, install a jacuzzi?
I mention these items in support of my call for a new job title: Certified Adult.
I can sit down and bang out a 500 page book in six months. I’m a good husband, an okay father, and I’m great in a crisis. What I am not, even at age 67, is a competent adult. Each of the above items comes with a barrage of paperwork and detail, two things I hate. Each has emotional complexities that I also hate. Who gets how much of the modest inheritance from the MIL? How do we arrange the house purchase in a way that is respectful of the smaller contributions of the BF’s working class family? Am I an idiot to walk away from six million dollars? And which is better for re-sale value, a malfunctioning waterfall or a jacuzzi?
As for taxes, I can’t get past the Marx Brothers. Taxes? I have an uncle who lives in taxes. No, no, taxes, money, dollars. That’s a right, my uncle lives in Dollars, Taxes.
What I need is an old-fashioned, 1950’s sitcom dad or mom, a Father Knows Best kind of grown-up, the experienced, reassuring adult who knows how to think about these things, who can step in and make decisions for me without forcing me to fill out paperwork and talk to loan officers or acknowledge the existence of accountants. I think this is a profession, or should be.
There was one scene in part one of “The Dropout,” a drama about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, which contained two things that got me thinking.
The scene takes place at the home of Richard Fuisz, a friend of the Holmes family. When Holmes says she’s going into a medical tech field, Fuisz’s wife tells her that’s what her husband’s company does. Holmes asks whether this company doesn’t just patent medical devices to shake down other companies for use of their patents. This is rather impertinent, even if true. But what struck me is what Fuisz says in reply.
More or less he says “My company’s worth $40 million, but I guess you think you’re smarter than I.”
Imagine if Holmes had said she wanted to get into athletics instead, and Fuisz won a gold medal at the Olympics once. Then Holmes said something nasty about his career, and he replied “I won a gold medal, but I guess you think you’re smarter than I.”
Does the latter make any sense? If not, does the first one make any sense?
Neither one does to me.
The other thing was that Holmes states, all of 18 years old, she wants to invent some device, found a company, and become a billionaire.
This is a drama, essentially fiction, with many liberties taken, etc. but this kind of contradicts the narrative of Holmes as a revolutionary disruptor of a whole field.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’ll do it. I’ll do it all for you.
Fee: $6,000,000
Have your people call my people and we will set it up.
@Michael Reynolds:
A jacuzzi in the kitchen would send all kinds of wrong signals.
@Michael Reynolds:
Kitchen Jacuzzi might cause hygiene problems, but could also be a fairly interesting way to pass the time while the casserole bakes…. 😉
@Kathy: I see you beat me to it….
@Jon: Thanx for the recommendations. I had spotted STL #1 & 2 (I grew up in STL so all things STL pop out to my eye) and had already marked them down. Metairie looks like an absolute must see. I can’t possibly visit them all in the 7 available days as my wife probably won’t allow me to visit more than 1 or 2 this trip. Gonna try and get to the Whitney Plantation and Avery Island too. Oh yeah, gotta spend some time with my granddaughter too. 😉
@Kathy:
Sounds to me like unrealistic fiction. In the glibertarian techbro world wouldn’t that be taken as a compliment?
If you find one, let me know. I’m in the market too.
That’s a tough nut to crack, one I’ll never have to worry about. The only thing I can think of is to talk to your daughter and her BF about it, assuming you feel comfortable talking to him about it.
I’ve been catching some of the Paralympics on TV, and I just want to say what a colossal piece of shit Madison Cawthorn is to have lied about being one of these amazing athletes.
Available on USA Network and PeacockTV
@OzarkHillbilly: You can dovetail the St. Louis ones with a tour of Treme and/or Mid-City (including City Park, NOMA, the Fairgrounds, etc.), and Metairie Cemetery is just right up the street from City Park. Boom, Bob’s your uncle.
And bring the granddaughter along, NOMA and City Park have fun stuff for kids (though as a locals she’s probably seen it all before).
Travel safe and have a great time!
@MarkedMan:
Yours is far less macabre.
I mean, what is a large pot of hot water used for in a kitchen?
@Michael Reynolds:
You’re a writer. You’re not supposed to be competent at that stuff.
@Kathy: Whoa. Just, whoa. Strait to cannibalism? If you ever invite me over for dinner, I’m going to have to absolutely clarify the use of “for” in that sentence…
@MarkedMan:
That would be the wrong signal, you see.
@Michael Reynolds: I seem to be taking on (being given) this role in my extended family. I suppose I appreciate the fact that family seeks my advice. I also understand that they have observed me going through enough forced adulting experiences to earn their trust.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You can slip more cemeteries in if you make them an outing with your granddaughter. 😉
@MarkedMan:
Both before and after Trump, I’ve never had difficulty believing Republicans can be good people. I know plenty who are. That’s not the issue I have with them at all.
My basic problem over the years is that I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that I have a great deal of trouble respecting them. By “respect,” I’m talking about my opinion of their basic reasoning capabilities. The modern Republican Party is built squarely and fundamentally on nonsense–beliefs that have been conclusively shown to be objectively false. Conservative media is pretty much just wall-to-wall misinformation–strings of lies, distortions, and half-truths, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And it only requires the most cursory of examinations to prove it. This is not something remotely new to the Trump era–it was around for decades before he rose to the presidency.
To accept all this, you have to be either extremely gullible or willfully delusional, and I am absolutely convinced that the vast majority of conservatives in the US are one or both of those things. You have to be fundamentally lacking in remedial critical thinking skills, and to have difficulty distinguishing reliable from unreliable sources of information. You have to be the sort of person who truly thinks you’ve owned global warming by bringing a snowball to the halls of Congress.
@Jon: Thanx again for all the tips. I only get to NOLA once a year so I like to make the most of it.
@Sleeping Dog: An outing with my granddaughter and w/o my wife??? Impossible! I love my wife, but she does not share my fascination with cities of the dead.
China seems to be having second thoughts about throwing their lot in with Russia. They are still expressing tepid support but are pledging aid to Ukraine. I don’t think this attempt to play both sides is going to benefit them. Xi very publicly and very strongly tied China to Russia just last month, and heaped scorn on the very idea that Russia would invade Ukraine. It looks like either Putin didn’t tell him, which makes Xi and China look like chumps, or that he did and China did nothing to protect or warn a major trading partner. We can speculate forever about how all of this played out between them, but we will never really know and in the end it doesn’t matter. Russia made a cock-up of things and dragged China in with it.
This.
As MR says, it begins with their indoctrination into Christianity and all the stuff in their holy book that the laws of nature say are impossible. “But that’s why they are miracles!” If one can believe in miracles, one can believe in anything. Including the idea that trump was sent by God to guide America into a new age of Christianity.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s why the grandchild is such a wonderful distraction. It’s a win, win, win, win. Gramma has her baby, grandchild has both of you, parents get the day off and you get the grandchild and the deceased gardens!
@Kylopod:
I more or less agree, but in a work environment it doesn’t mean that they can’t figure out a way to get a vendor to ship parts in short supply, or why turning on a particular LED causes a shift in bias current in an unrelated circuit. It makes intuitive sense that gullibility in putting a bunch of internet trolls above the CDC or a reputable investment advisor would translate into gullibility in all facets of their life, but in my experience this hasn’t proven to be the case.
Trumpers are a different matter. I define a trumper as a belligerent and argumentative fool. This type of person is going to cause problems in the workplace, and should definitely be avoided. But for someone who, like me, keeps their opinion to themselves and can just get on with their work, it’s important to focus on job performance, not life choices.
Supposedly the Russian army knocked down the 3G/4G masts needed to carry out their military super-secret communications. . Then discovered what they had done. Oops.
But yeah, let’s blame Joe Biden.
Oil Industry Pleads with Wall St to Stop Holding Back Investment
A friend, a retired Wall Streeter, is fond of saying that at a moment of political crisis, he looks to the markets to judge the seriousness. If WS is choosing not to invest in oil, it’s because they have no confidence that it will be a prudent investment when the crisis is over. The market is pouring money into renewables, infrastructure improvements and storage technologies.
@Kylopod:
Other possibility: they’re deliberately making choices with the intent of hurting other people.
Humans are not as simple as all black or all white, we are all shades of gray, capable of good, capable of evil. It is not at all surprising to find a person who is pleasant and well-behaved in public but secretly hordes kiddy-porn. If you doubt a person can be 100% lovely while seething with hatred, visit the old south.
Twitter isn’t reality.
The writer does make the error of placing self described political independents in the middle of the partisan continuum.
Picking up a thread from yesterday, I too was once a commenter at Reason’s Hit&Run Blog, although I haven’t done so in (quick google) eight year now, and consider it part of my “recovering libertarian” status.
@Michael Reynolds: Heh, reminds me of a line from the start of “Seymour: an Introduction” by Salinger.
@EddieInCA: What he is describing is the roll that I played for my ex-wife. I did it for free and as an act of love. $6 million is too much. MR, I’ll do it for $3 million–provided that I don’t have to move to do it.
Dr.T bait
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Who am I kidding? I’ll do it for a million, and a good bottle of Weller.
And I don’t have to move because MR lives only 10 miles away, which with LA traffic, takes me an hour to travel.
@OzarkHillbilly:
There’s no price gouging happening. Raising prices while you’re already raking in enough billions in profits to do endless stock buybacks is surely not price gouging.
Prices just magically raise by themselves; there’s no human agency involved anywhere in the process. To say someone made a decision is denialism or something.
P.S. I think America gets about ~5-10% of its oil from Russia, but whatever. The point that we’re not reliant on Russian energy stands.
@Sleeping Dog:
I ask again: what problems facing America go into the “solved” pile after the major party coalitions split into smaller parties? Because the parties split up, we start to agree on issues all of a sudden? People become better at critical thinking all of a sudden? The influence of Fox News evaporates? Corporate lobbying vanishes? The Supreme Court is no longer apartheid trash? The media stops bothsidesing?
The problem is the American people. You can put whatever party labels you want on it, but garbage by any other name is still garbage.
@EddieInCA:
A few more posts like this, and one of you will be offering Michael money to manage his life.
@DK: I would call it an expected result from the ability to have an excuse to raise prices.
(or, if one is charitable, it’s an expected result of trying to put the risk of fluctuations on the other side.)
@DK:
While it would take a longer response to fully flesh this out, imagine a Senate wherein there is a chance to cut a deal between the moderate left party and the non-Trump conservatives.
Or, perhaps more to the point, consider a political world wherein every question isn’t automatically dichotomized into a W for me is a L for you (and vice versa).
It would change governance.
@Michael Reynolds:
Or visit Boston or Los Angeles or, you know, anywhere.
Source: Shocking secret racism I’ve encountered in Boston, Los Angeles, and other places. America could actually solve bigotry if we stopped pretending only Southerners do it while our hands are clean. Trump grew up in Queens and Manhattan?
@Steven L. Taylor:
That sort of thing used to be routine in the United States, except it wasn’t small parties cutting deals with larger ones, it was factions within parties being given room to breathe. The present situation isn’t inherent to the two-party system, but developed as one faction took over the entire party and made everyone else subservient.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Wishful thinking. They can do that right now. There’s nothing stopping these so-called non-Trump conservatives (aka conservatives who secretly agree with Trump) from voting to save voting rights, fix climate change, enact sensible gun reforms etc. Except that they don’t want to, and changing the letter behind their name is not going to change that.
Portman, Toomey, Selby, Blunt, and Burr are retiring. Murkowski, Collins, Romney, Graham, Scott, etc do not need Trump. What’s stopping these people? The letter behind their name, OK sure. Pollyanna has entered the chat.
@OzarkHillbilly: From Thursday to yesterday, gas prices went up almost a dollar at some stations here. Never seen anything like it even in the 70s.
@Just nutha: Magic.
@Just nutha: And the Republican playbook, as always, will be to simultaneously (a) attack Biden for inflation (b) pretend inflation doesn’t exist when comparing past and present rates.
@Jon:
That is a brilliant quote!
@EddieInCA: Okay! The gig’s yours.
@Kylopod:
Oh, I’m not doubting the existence of evil in Los Angeles – I live there. But southerners have perfected the art of seeming to be sugary sweet while plotting your destruction. Yankees don’t go in as much for misdirection.
@Michael Reynolds:
Lisa Alther once told me that southerners would bring you a pie to welcome you to town and then kill you.
@Kylopod: I only made an observation. I attached no blame to anyone.
@Steven L. Taylor: It would change governance, yes, but in a good way? Israel has cemented itself as an apartheid state and has additionally ceded massive state power to religious zealots, and also subsidizes hundreds of thousands of these zealots to do nothing but cause trouble, all because of these deals.
@Kylopod: What Kylopod says.
@Kylopod:
And it’s not just US media either – it’s fundamental to the nature of modern conservative media to straight up lie clearly disprovable lies for anyone thinking about it for 2 seconds. Here’s an example from Russia within the last day or so:
BULLSHIT. Their country is being bombed – sorry, experiencing a “special military operation” for several weeks now. There’s no way in hell the civilians aren’t suffering if you knew anything about how guns, bombs or the military works…. or even stopped to think about how disruptive even a clockwork, precise and minimal invasion would have been. To believe this statement means willfully putting aside basic logic and reason to accept the offered BS. It means willfully believing you can send tanks to a neighboring nation and it won’t hurt or inconvenience them in the slightest. Small children understand this easily but adults will blindly bleat to your face the latest pro-Russian nonsense.
To be a conservative in this era of instant information is to be intentionally gullible and willfully obstinate in the face of reason so they can keep in their bubble. They may be “good people” in a subjective sense but something in them is either defective or darkly to consistently choose to view the world like that. We’re all subjected to propaganda, remember – two people can hear the same BS but only one falls for it. It’s either a choice or an internal flaw but either way, it’s not a good thing.
The Ukrainians have announced the killing of a second Russian General. This reminds me the quote of Sir William Slim, Britian’s finest general of WW II, that “Nothing is so good for morale of the troops as occasionally to see a dead general”
Of course, Slim was speaking of the troop’s own general.
@CSK:
The wonderful show that was on FX several years back, Justified, had fun with this “fact,” in that one of the characters (granted, she was a crime boss, but still) was known to set up a meeting with you and share a slice of her apple pie. Great show, and I bet plenty of folks, Southerners and Yankees alike, will now pause and wonder if there should be cause for concern because the person you are meeting with chose Apple Pie as the sweet treat to enjoy during your meeting, when they could have chose a piece of Cherry or Peach Pie, or a nice slice of cake.
@Michael Reynolds:
I lived in a Dallas suburb for a couple years in the early 70s. My neighbors and local friends were basically good people. I was open and honest with them , but had to eventually realize they thought telling the truth was some devious Yankee form of lying.
@gVOR08:
According to Florence King, southerners never let the truth interfere with a good story.
@DK: ?
Nobody said there was.
I do believe it’s called, “greed” but feel free to label it however you like.
It’s not magic, it’s supply and demand and human agency lies at the center of it.
I’m not even sure what this refers to.
Local supermarket petrol station price now £1.6/L for regular unleaded.
I think that converts to equivalent roughly $9.5 per gallon.
Going to be considerably higher fairly soon.
Current estimate that average household heating bills on renewal of £3500 per annum.
I expect them to spike higher by early summer.
@CSK: King’s analysis of the Southern obsession to trace one’s family line back to Bonnie Prince Charlie is hilarious.
Biden’s announced a ban on Russian oil.
Rationally, this shouldn’t send prices sky high, because the US import very little oil from Russia. But what happens if other countries follow suit, especially EU countries who import more oil from Russia?
More to the point, what happens to Russia’s income? What oil they sell will be priced high, but how much can they sell?
@KM:
I just want to note that there is nothing in what you quoted that indicates the individual was liberal or conservative, just that they were Russian. From the tenor of the question I think it is safe to say that he wants to live. I also rather doubt he is expecting a sensible answer to his question.
What is his purpose in asking it then? I don’t know, maybe he just drew the short straw.
@CSK: And me.
@a country lawyer: I just finished Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter. Astounding how many US Generals died in the winter of ’50-’51. Not to mention Bird Colonels.
@OzarkHillbilly: And not all were by enemy action. LGen. Walton Walker, the U.S. commanding general, was killed when his jeep rolled over.
@a country lawyer: It never is all. I remember reading about WW dying, had forgotten exactly how. It was just surprising turning a page and there’s another dead general. It was almost like the Civil War.
@Kathy:
All oil is a global market (to a very large extent).
Similar with natural gas, but modified by shipping being trickier.
In the UK, we obtain 44% of natural gas from UK North Sea and Irish Sea
Of the 56% imported: Norway about 60%; Qatar 30%; Netherlands 7%.
Russia, very little.
That has not, and will not, stop our methane prices spiking up along with the European market rate.
Basic market mechanisms in operation.
(Of course, how far you allow free markets to function is another issue entirely)
Now I wonder whether healthy children really need to be vaccinated against measles, polio, pertussis, rubella, etc. At least in Florida, where the state’s recommendation is not to vaccinate them against COVID.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t want to reenter the argument, but it should be noted the author explicitly said she welcomed being challenged and having a serious debate. The column was about fearing that having opinions different than the expected group-think would have repercussions on her grades and similar.
Meta’s Sheryl Sandberg: ‘No two countries run by women would ever go to war’
I expect this claim, if even accurate, won’t last any longer than the claim that 2 countries that have a McDonalds would go to war.
@Kathy:
There are lots of indications that the oil majors and traders are refusing to touch Russian oil.
IIRC Harvard Law mentioned a whole offering of Russian oil trades going unsold a few days ago.
And in the UK dockers are refusing to allow Russian oil to be unloaded.
They may be able to stick in dodgy third party tankers flagged out of Macao or some such, and try flogging it somewhere.
But lotsa luck getting insurance; and then the possibility before very long of court cases for seizure of Russian assets to cover the foreign currency payments due they are refusing to meet would not surprise me.
Fun, fun, fun for the lawyers.
Not to mention that right now their main oil ports on the Black Sea are not operating.
Maybe Denmark will close the Sound, for added entertainment.
@JohnSF:
I’ll butcher J.B.S. Haldane and paraphrase: the market isn’t more complicated than you imagine, it’s more complicated than you can imagine.
@OzarkHillbilly: @MarkedMan: Nope, we’re not doing this again today. Too soon. History being any judge MR will find another NYT op-ed on the same topic in a couple weeks or months, and we can start this back up then.
Poland is giving Ukraine their MiG-29s:
https://twitter.com/mmcintire/status/1501281546430566403?
Transferring them to the US, the US will then turn them over to Ukraine. Poland has urged other NATO countries to do the same.
@DK: while agree with you on that having grown up in Milwaukee which is either one or two on the list of most segregated cities in the country, since moving to Huntsville, AL the racism down here is to a degree of difference I couldn’t have imagined. I haven’t gone a week since moving down here a year ago that I haven’t heard a white person say the n word, often in front of POC. Northern racism is much sneakier but it is out front. It’s just accepted down here in way that is hard for me to grasp. Back home there would be a fight if a white person said the n word in mixed company, down here it’s just an aspect of life. I’ve also been told several times Huntsville is the most progressive city down here and we might as well be yankees.
@JohnSF:
Correct. I was only referring to Surgutneftegas back then, which failed to elicit any bids for Urals crude in three consecutive tenders, but we are obviously way beyond just that scenario now. AFAICT, the market is just shunning Russian crude essentially across the board.
@Jon: 😉
Just in: Guy Reffitt, the first of the “serious” Jan 6 defendants to go to trial – convicted on all five charges. The jury deliberated less than 4 hours.
@Jen:
Which is almost certainly to say that we are buying them (either in coin or replacement equipment) from Poland and passing them on Ukraine. To which I say: great. Let’s do more of it.
@Michael Reynolds:
Indeed. Southerners will smile to someone’s face but talk about them behind their back. All of the imagined gentility is a facade / exercise in performance art for appearances. Northerners don’t have time for such silliness. We will smile to their face while directly telling them that they’re an asshole.
Putin’s cyber-psyops is in overdrive. They are circulating propaganda that purports to fact-check Ukrainian fakes.
In other words, Russian disinformation campaigns are now creating fake-fakes and then “fact checking” them.
@Jen:
@HarvardLaw92:
Apparently deal is Poland transfers planes, gets increased USAF forward air deployment probably boosting the planes operating out of Łask Air Base.
Also increased French and RAF forward air patrols, and the French and Danish BAP operating out of Amari and Siauliai.
Apparently the problem has been scrounging up F-16s and F-35’s to supply to Poland (and Romania? Bulgaria?) to fill the holes in their strength.
They understandably don’t want to be short of aircraft right now.
I suspect transfers from USANG.
Also wonder if there any F-18’s that might be transferred as backfill, albeit with more need for pilot and groundcrew training and support facilities.
@Jen:
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
@MarkedMan:
She welcomes “being challenged and having a serious debate” in the imaginary right wing version of debate where she stands up, makes her speech, and everyone is just so bowled over by her brilliance that they give her a stand ovation and then rush out of class to go join the Federalist Society.
But instead people fidgeted in their seats, suggesting they had the temerity to not be convinced by her arguments, which is really just unforgiveable oppression.
@Kathy:
Spasibo!
President Putin working on that, but is very busy right now.
Please be waiting for further exciting informations.
Dasvidaniya.
@Kylopod:
The thing is that the two-party system prior to 1994 had an almost embedded three party system (because south conservative Dems were their own thing). This created an unusual, and almost certainly NOT repeatable, situation. As I have detailed before, it was because of the US Civil War and the fact that the southeast was solid Democrat.
I know people want it to be about one part misbehaving (and there is definitely some of that), but I really, truly want people to understand that, yes, a HUGE part of the problem is structure.
We are seeing the expected results of polarized two-partyism with presidentialism. The previous period was the period of aberration, not the current period.
See, for example:
US Party System Evolution
Partisan Control in the Congress
More on the Evolution of US Party Politics
@DK:
The incentives mitigate against it.
The general behavior is roughly what we would expect given the incentives. Compromise won’t lead the current GOP to victory, but obstruction will. Hence, they obstruct. There is not incentive to compromise. With more parties the incentive structure changes.
@Stormy Dragon: What did I just say? Do not make me take my belt off 😉
@Stormy Dragon: or worse, people might just ignore her because she is a waste of time.
Why bother “debating” the closed mind?
I await my NY Times OpEd.
@MarkedMan: @
We have a highly polarized, locked-in 2-party system. Israel has a highly fragmented, fluid, multiparty system. These are two ends of a spectrum. As such, the appropriate answer to “the US needs more parties” is not “well, Israel has too many.”
This is like saying my tea is too hot, could you please heat it up for me, and you telling me that the sun would melt my face and why would I want that? Well, almost 😉
We might need a daily “Ukraine exists” forum to keep the Open Forum clear for things like bickering about cancel culture, recipes for boiling guests in jacuzzis, xylophones, etc.
@Steven L. Taylor: Tea, Earl Gray, superheated to a plasma.
@JohnSF:
I’d tell you I’m hopeful SpaceX’s Starship will succeed in putting people on Mars, but then we’ll make a hash of the red planet as we did of the blue one.
@Gustopher:
For me, the most telling line in the op-ed was the “I Came to College Eager to Debate”.
She didn’t come to college to learn, you see, but to debate, because she already has all the answers and just needs to convert the barbarians.
@Kathy:
Surely God-Emperor Elon I, Twice Born Pharaoh of the Red Lands, would never allow such a thing to befall his chosen people!
@JohnSF:
A large number, if not all, of the available F-16’s have been committed to Taiwan, who can use them as well. Don’t know how this has been finessed.
@JohnSF:
I’m sure he won’t, but it’s not relevant. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
@OzarkHillbilly:
She. It was a group of female pilots and crew members from Aeroflot who were clearly there to feed him lines. That’s not in question. What’s in question is anyone who, like you, didn’t immediately go “well she clearly said that she’s not F’ed” but rather “OMG that’s a relief. The military just confirmed no civilians were being harmed. Those lying Ukrainians are lying and must be Nazis like Putin said!”
It’s clearly propaganda. But it’s working on someone and that someone is likely to be conservative as that’s who is pushing the Everyone’s Fine and Putin’s Just Nazi Huntin’ BS. It also neatly dovetails in the religious BS about how it’s a holy war against a secular or evil order (looking at you evangelicals and Russian Orthodox) or FOX / GOP BS about how Putin’s not really a murderous invading wannabe emperor but was *made* to do it for reasons (current lies are VP Harris tricked him into it or was so incompetent he HAD to invade to get dem Nazzis and free Donbas). Again, the conservative accepts the clear untruth because it complements their preferred internal reality rather then think about it for 5 seconds. Staged thing was obviously staged yes but it sold listeners on the lie. It gets picked up and repeated ad nauseum across the ecosphere and now internationally as Russia TV airs FOX to prove their point and vice versa.
My point stands – you called it out for what it was. FOX won’t and it’s watchers won’t. It will either be ignored or absorbed into the larger body of “evidence” that Ukraine is fake news, not as bad as the liberal media’s making it sound or all Biden’s fault instead of Putin.
Now I’m confused. I though the US government, which I assume includes the military, negotiated the transfer of the MiG-29s from Poland to Ukraine by way of the US.
But now: US dismisses Polish plan to provide fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine.
Seriously, WTF?
@Jamie: To hell with that traitor. He can rot in Russia while it collapses.
@Kathy: Plausible deniability. We don’t talk about Fight Club.
@Kathy: Pentagon, when the fighter jets are in Ukraine next week: “I’m shocked, shocked those fighter jets are in Ukraine. How did those get there? Your guess is as good as mine.”
@OzarkHillbilly:..grandchildren…
I got to briefly experience that joy. By the time I married my ex her adopted daughter Monica was an adult and had children of her own.
Monica was born in a whorehouse in Saigon in 1970. She is half white and half Vietnamese. Her mama was a hooker and her daddy was a GI Joe. She never knew her biological parents. In 1975 when Saigon fell she was evacuated to Guam where my ex was living. As a teenager in Guam she got in trouble with the law. That’s how the two of them met. My ex was her probation officer.
My ex relocated back to the US to go to law school. Before we were married Monica and her family, husband, 3 daughters and infant son and two girl cousins ranging in age from the baby to 12 years old flew from Guam to Hawaii to LA to Houston to Orlando. Ex and me drove to Florida to see them. We were there for 3 days. One day was spent at Disney World. A good time was had by all.
I tried to keep in touch with Monica and her family after my divorce. I sent birthday cards and Christmas cards and care packages for the kids. Never once got any kind of acknowledgment that the gifts and cards were received. After three years I gave up.
I can only hope that they are all happy and well. The Disney World excursion was in 1995. The newborn baby boy is closing in on 30 now.
The Disney World pictures are still on my refrigerator door.
Everytime I look at those kids I have to tell myself no more tears…
@Steven L. Taylor: I’ve asked you before, but received no answer, where is the evidence that increasing the number of parties brings better outcomes? My gut tells me this is not so, but my gut is wrong with distressing frequency. So I am asking sincerely, what is the evidence that increasing the number of parties leads to Sweden and not Israel?
@MarkedMan: I’ve always wondered why we have to have “parties” at all. Say nobody’s allowed to announce which party they’re “for”, and then let the voters sort that shit out, without any R’s or D’s behind their names.
@Michael Reynolds: Sorry to hear about your MIL. My mom was similar, made it to 88. She had a long life and good life so she beat the odds.
A jacuzzi? How often would you use it? Everyday for a week, less often as time goes by, rarely if ever after a year? That seems to be the pattern that I’ve observed but maybe you’re a true enthusiast.
@Jax: I’m not getting into the history. You really don’t know it? Washington would have agreed with you, but parties emerged anyway, and there hasn’t ever been a functioning democracy in the modern world without competitive parties.
As for letting the voters sort it out, are you serious? When I see that a candidate is a Dem, they could be total trash as far as I know–but the law of averages suggests they’re a lot saner than any Republicans. I can vote straight D without having to research any of the candidates, and know with reasonable confidence that they’re the better of the two options.
In 2014, during the Louisiana Senate race, Democrat Mary Landrieu came out against medical marijuana, and Republican Bill Cassidy came out for it. If I lived in Louisiana, would that have led me to vote for the Republican? Probably not, but at least it would have given me pause. I mention this example because it was a rare case where a Republican was clearly better than his Dem opponent on a specific issue–and that was 8 years ago, in an election cycle that was basically a last hurrah of the Blue Dogs. I can’t think of a single time that’s ever happened again.
I don’t need people to have a D or R after their name to know what they’re about. Bernie Sanders and Angus King don’t have a D after their name, but at least they organize with the Dems. If tomorrow King were to suddenly announce he was caucusing with the Repubs as he’s mused about doing in the past, that would mean he’d joined the dark side. It would instantly tell me more about him than a list of his stated positions ever could.
@Kylopod: No, I know the history, I was just wishing on a fairy tale. 🙂